This blog features my weekly column called "What's up in the sky". It is published every Saturday in the Ellensburg newspaper, Daily Record (http://www.kvnews.com/). While my postings will be most accurate for Central Washington, readers throughout the northern USA may find something of use.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

The Ellensburg WA sky for the week of 1/14/17

Saturday: Who
can forget that memorable song by Three Dog Constellations Night, “The sky is
black. The stars are white. Together we learn to find the light.” Well, maybe
it didn’t go like that. Which is good. Because not all stars are white. Most
stars are too dim to notice a color. But, two of the stars in the constellation
Orion provide a noticeable contrast with each other. Betelgeuse, five fists
held upright and at arm’s length above the south horizon at 10:30 p.m. is a red
giant. Rigel, the bright star about two fists to the lower right of Betelgeuse,
is a blue giant.

By the way,
the three dog constellations are Canis Major, the greater dog, found one and a
half fists to the lower left of Orion; Canis Minor, the lesser dog, found two
and a half fists to the left of Betelgeuse; and Canes Venatici, the hunting
dogs, found low in the northeast sky. Canis Major contains Sirius, the
brightest star in the nighttime sky.

Sunday: On
these cold mornings, it is difficult to get going. You just want to plop into a
chair and sit still. But, are you really sitting still? You’re moving at about
700 miles per hour due to the rotation of the Earth on its axis and 66,000
miles per hour due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. If that’s not
enough, the entire solar system is orbiting the center of the galaxy at a
whopping 480,000 miles per hour! So while you may be sitting still with respect
to your living room (and all of the over achievers in your house), you are NOT
sitting still with respect to the center of the galaxy. For more information
about this concept, go to http://goo.gl/lPVPS. Before you barf from all of that
motion, go outside twice over the next 12 hours and observe five Solar System
objects. At 6 p.m., Venus is two and a half fists held upright and at arm’s
length above the southwest horizon. Mars is a fist to the upper left of Venus.
At 7 a.m. tomorrow, Mercury is less than a fist above the southeast horizon and
Saturn is a fist to the upper right of Mercury. Jupiter is three fists above
the south-southwest horizon.

Monday: Vega
is one fist above the northwest horizon at 7 p.m.

Tuesday: Have you ever planned a vacation to a place because it was
supposedly the up-and-coming locale? Then, when the vacation time finally
arrives, you find out the place doesn’t live up to its billing? A little over four
years ago, astronomers discovered that the star Tau Ceti, one of our closest
neighbors at 12 light years away, has five planets. They claimed two of the
planets are in the so-called habitable zone where the temperature is just right
for having liquid water. Time for a va-ca-tion! Well, not so fast. A new model
indicates that one of the planets is in the habitable zone only is you make
very generous assumptions. And the other probably moved into the habitable zone
fairly recently. In any case, you’ll want to do some research before you travel
there. Tau Ceti is two and a half fists above the south-southwest horizon at 7
p.m. For more information about the discovery, go to http://goo.gl/mVdncK.

Wednesday:
You never see a giraffe on the ground in Ellensburg. But you can look for one
every night in the sky. The constellation Camelopardalis the giraffe is
circumpolar from Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees north meaning it is always
above the horizon. Don’t expect to be overwhelmed by the appearance of the
stars in Camelopardalis. The brightest star in the constellation appears only
about half as bright as the dimmest star in the Big Dipper. However, the actual
luminosities of the three brightest stars in Camelopardalis are very high, each
at least 3,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Alpha Camelopardalis, a mind
boggling 600,000 times more luminous than the Sun, is seven fists above the
northern horizon at 9 p.m.

Thursday: Do you see a hunter when you look at Orion? Betelgeuse and the
bright star one fist to the right of it are the broad shoulders of the hunter.
Rigel and Saiph, the bright star to the left of Rigel, represent the
knees.The Maya saw the
equilateral triangle formed by Rigel, Saiph, and the left-most belt star as the
“Three Stones of the Hearth”. The Orion Nebula is in the center of the hearth
and it represents the flame, called K’ak.

Friday:
Listen; do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell? Whoa oh, oh.
The Beatles certainly didn’t write this song about the Barringer meteorite
crater in Arizona. Astronomers are studying this 50,000-year-old impact to
learn more about our planet’s violent history as well as the physics of impacts
throughout the solar system. If you’d like to be let in on some of these
secrets, go to http://goo.gl/sqbBe.

The
positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically
accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky,
go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.